We're The Ones Who Live | The Walking Dead (2)

Part 17 - Can't Forget

"Myself and Clara-Jane were taken with the others. And we saw..."

Siddiq was stood on the stage at the Kingdom the day after the events in the barn. His eyes glistened with unshed tears, and he tried to keep his voice steady as he relived the night. Everyone was gathered to listen to him speak of what happened to the people they loved; the people who died. 

Daryl stood at the back of the crowd alone, leaning against a tree. He listened to what Siddiq was saying whilst he kept glancing up to a window of the apartment building beside him, missing and worrying about the only one who wasn't stood out there with the crowd. His wife. 

"I was supposed to die with them," Siddiq continued. "I was ready to. Then one of Alpha's people whispered in my ear, 'Tell them'. Something hit me and everything went black, I... When I woke up, CJ and I had been left alone... 

What happened was evil. It was evil. And I think Alpha left the two of us alive to tell you that story. To scare you and to drive us all apart again."

"But I wanna tell you a different story..." Siddiq changed his tone. "See, before the end, Ozzy, Alek and DJ found us. They gave us an opening, and everyone fought back. They fought like hell. And what they did... Was more than brave. They defended each other. And they sacrificed for each other. And some of them - they didn't even know each other, but they still fought like they did...Like they were family... 'Till the very end."

Siddiq bit the inside of his cheek as a single tear fell from his eye. "And uh... And in the end, they... Their time was cut short. But ours keeps going. So, we have to keep going. For them, and... for all of us. We need to honour them. We need to honour them, and we need to remember these friends... Our family... Died as heroes."

"That's the story I wanna tell you, I..." His voice wavered and his bottom lip quivered. "That's the story that I want us all to remember."

Hardly a word was uttered as Siddiq stepped down from the stage, and the crowd dispersed through the streets of the Kingdom. The losses of the last day weighed heavily on everyone's shoulders, even those who didn't know the ones that died. They had all gathered at the Kingdom to come together after so many years of being apart, only for Alpha and the Whisperers to turn up and try to turn them against one another. Nobody could, or would, let that happen.

 When Daryl had last left CJ, she was lying in bed and refusing to close her eyes. She had barely spoken a word since what had happened, and Daryl was terrified. He thought her loud cries when they first came to the border were awful, but the silence was worse.

He made his way inside and up the two flights of stairs to the small apartment CJ was sleeping in, and he knocked on the door, softly calling her name. "C? It's me. I'm gonna come in, alright?"

On the other side of the door, CJ was slumped down with her back to the wall beneath the open window, and her knees to her chest. The curtains were closed, only allowing then tendrils of sunlight into the room. She had listened to Siddiq's speech with her eyes locked on the wall across from her, and the graphic images of what happened to all those people kept flashing in her mind.

There was another soft knock on the door, and she barely registered what was happening around her as the door was opened and closed by Daryl. His eyebrows furrowed in panic when she wasn't in bed, and he let out a small breath when he spotted her by the window.

"Hey." He rushed over to her and crouched down in front of her, placing his hands on her raised knees. "You're meant to be restin'."

The Kingdom's doctor had confirmed that CJ had a concussion from when she was knocked out. A bandage was wrapped around her head with extra gauze and padding over the bruises on her temple and the back of her head. The cut that ran down her right cheek from her eye to her jaw had been stitched and would leave one hell of a scar after it was healed.